‘Just a bit of a history project,’ I said, trying to seem like it didn’t matter, even as I stood shivering in the rain. ‘I wanted to know more about the camp.’

He smiled. Looked at me like I was charmingly mad. ‘You need a television, love.’

‘I have one. Can’t get it to work.’

‘You have an aerial?’ he asked. ‘Up proper? Should pick up the signal, love.’

I smiled again, hoping he wouldn’t push it. My husband had sent me a splendid television in a wooden case. All I had to do was get a local in to set it up for me. The only picture it had ever shown was my own reflection, puzzled and frustrated and cursing my own incompetence. Feckless, that was the word for it. I was utterly devoid of feck.

‘Am I going the right way? I know it’s through the castle and into the next field but I haven’t seen any signs.’

He laughed. Showed me a pointed pink tongue, protruding over his bottom lip like a terrier’s. ‘A sign? No, love. You’ll be lucky to see owt anyways. Bulldozers took it down years back. Not the sort of place you want to mek a fuss about.’

I could understand that. Nixon had said as much. A few mounds and a couple of outbuildings; some peculiar shapes in the grass. I felt suddenly silly; abruptly aware of the folly of setting out to see this place for such an absurd reason. I’d seen a corpse, of that I was certain. Fairfax had died not long after I alerted him to it. Fairfax had a son who died in the war and he had a habit of asking questions. Through design or accident, Gilsland sat between two edifices that had a vested interest in keeping their secrets buried: a Prisoner of War camp a couple of miles up the road and an RAF base on the other. It only made sense that I go and poke around. What the hell else was there to do with myself? But the idea of saying that to anybody else suddenly made me flush with colour. I was doing nothing but getting wet and looking silly.

‘Yer far from home?’ he asked.

‘Back in Gilsland,’ I said.

He looked me up and down. Put a couple of pieces together in his head. ‘You’ll be Mrs Hemlock,’ he said, and tugged at the imagined brim of his hat.

‘Cordelia,’ I said, surprised.

‘I’m Loz,’ he said. ‘Loz Gladwin. I’ve got farm at Park Burn. Near as neighbours to the castle, like. I were sorry to hear of yer sadness,’ he said.